


Photosynthesis

by GoldenTruth813



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff, Gardening, M/M, Professor!Harry, Professor!Neville
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 07:41:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13430076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenTruth813/pseuds/GoldenTruth813
Summary: In which Neville loves Harry and Harry loves Neville and there is an abundance of cheesy gardening shirts and laughter.





	Photosynthesis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aibidil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aibidil/gifts), [untilourapathy (gwendolen_lotte)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwendolen_lotte/gifts), [gracie137](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracie137/gifts), [unadulteratedstorycollector](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unadulteratedstorycollector/gifts), [synonym4life](https://archiveofourown.org/users/synonym4life/gifts), [GingerTodgers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GingerTodgers/gifts), [frnklymrshnkly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/frnklymrshnkly/gifts), [carpemermaidtales (carpemermaid)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carpemermaid/gifts), [zeitgeistic (faire_weather)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/faire_weather/gifts).



> Thank you Aibidil for the beta!!! <3

Neville bites his lip as he presses his face into his pillow and pretends to be asleep. Harry is not, no matter what he thinks, remotely sneaky or quiet, which is evidenced by the racket he’s currently making stumbling around their quarters at half past eleven at night.

Neville supposes Harry probably had been stealthy enough as an Auror, but that had only lasted a few years before Harry had essentially had a nervous breakdown and quit in a rather dramatic manner, blowing up his Auror robes in the Atrium and quite literally flipping the Ministry the finger. It’d been in the Prophet daily after that. At which point Harry had, after weeks of being unable to even step outside his apartment for fear of scrutiny, taken Headmistress McGonagall up on her offer of sanctuary at Hogwarts over the summer holiday.

That’d been almost ten years ago. Harry had turned up looking stressed and ready to jump out of his skin, and Neville had done the one thing he knew how to do best: he taught Harry to garden. Harry spent hours with him in the greenhouses, tending the plants by hand. Harry was a much better student at twenty-four than he had been at sixteen, and Neville wondered if perhaps they both might’ve been better students if they’d each had a bit more faith in themselves.

Neville had been attracted to him for a long time, but it wasn’t until they were both elbows deep in the dirt, laughing at some ridiculous gardener joke Harry had made — which he did a lot of — that it hit Neville that Harry was flirting with him. It had never occurred to Neville that his feelings might be returned. It had made heat pool in his belly and his face flush, but luckily the midsummer sun beating down on the greenhouse meant it was hot enough to explain away the way his entire body was beginning to drip with sweat and the way he knew his face was blossoming red.

Neville was used to accepting things for what they were, to not asking for more in life than he thought he deserved. So he’d pushed aside his attraction to Harry for as long as he could remember. He filed it away with things he knew to be true but that he had no intention of doing anything about.

Except after that day something shifted. Something in Harry made Neville feel braver than he had in years, made his heart beat louder and faster. Harry made Neville want to live his life out loud instead of hiding in the shadows of the safe sanctuary he had built.  At least that's what Neville chalked it up to when, the next day when Harry joined the professors for lunch, Neville pressed their legs together under the table, the heat from Harry’s thigh burning into his own as Harry’s mouth had turned up in a pleased looking smile. Or the way Neville wrapped around Harry from behind, covering his hands with his own and pressing them into the dirt together one late day in August when Harry couldn’t figure out how to re-pot a particularly finicky Brazilian Fly Trap.

Harry was like the sun, warm and powerful — magnetic. Neville had spent so long thinking that Harry’s everything eclipsed him, that they could not be equals, until the moment Harry’s warm, chapped lips had pressed against his own and he’d realized with utter clarity that Harry’s radiance wouldn’t burn him, it would enrich him.

Harry tasted like treacle tart and apple pie, his skin impossibly warm and his chest firm and hard as he pressed Neville back against the greenhouse wall. And Neville had closed his eyes and simply breathed, breathed in the richness of the earth and the jasmine blooming two rows up, but mostly he’d breathed in Harry, the scent of his shampoo and muskiness of his skin as Neville found his lips pressed against Harry’s neck, delighting in the way Harry had whimpered his name.

Neville understood then that he loved Harry.

It’d taken another month before he told him, whispered it against the soft expanse of Harry’s stomach as Harry had moved beneath him, all strong words and soft touches, his chest heaving as he’d touched Neville with a kind of reverence he had never known.

The next morning Neville had rolled them over, had pressed Harry back into the pillows and asked him to stay at Hogwarts, to stay in Neville’s life. The way Harry had smiled at him, full of awe and hope, had taken Neville’s breath away because Harry had looked so much like the small eleven-year-old Neville remembered from the boat trip across the lake the first time they saw Hogwarts. Neville hadn’t known it was possible for someone to look at him as if he were worth everything, but Harry did.

Harry had come to Hogwarts to heal himself, but somewhere along the way he’d healed Neville too. Except Neville hadn’t known he was broken, not until Harry had loved the parts of Neville even Neville couldn't love.

“Ow, fuck,” Harry curses, knocking Neville out of his thoughts as Harry kicks his toe on the end of their bed. Neville has to suppress a laugh. He doesn’t need to be able to see Harry to know he’s probably shooting death glares at their wooden four-poster bed.

It’s another two minutes before he hears Harry sigh. “Alright, open your eyes now. I know you’re not asleep.”

Neville can’t stop the laugh that bubbles out of his chest as he sits up. “How did you know?”

Harry raises an eyebrow, sitting down at the end of the bed. “You’re not exactly subtle, you know.”

Neville has to stifle the urge to remind Harry that he’s about as subtle as a brick wall but he bites it back, knowing how much this surprise means to Harry every year even if it's not exactly a surprise anymore. There’s something sweet about how much Harry loves this tradition they have.

“What time is it?” Neville asks, pushing the duvet away and crawling across the bed towards Harry.  Harry smiles at him, that soft smile reserved just for him and Neville feels a wave of affection rush over him. Harry, with his messy hair and bright eyes, his infectious smile and biting wit, Harry with his kind heart and patience, especially when he teaches his students. Neville loves this man in front of him — loves the way his smile hasn’t changed in the last ten years, even if things like his body or his career have.

“It’s…” but Harry pauses, looking down at his watch and silently counting to himself. Neville knows what’s coming next. His midnight birthday kiss. Harry had smiled at him that first time he’d kissed him at 11:59 on Neville’s birthday, kissed him until he was sure it was past midnight. Harry had told him they’d kissed from Neville's birthday until his own, that it was a day that joined them the same way their hearts were joined.

“It’s time,” Harry whispers, leaning forward and wrapping his arms around Neville as he presses their lips together. The kiss is familiar and comforting and somehow just as exhilarating as the first time, and when Harry pulls out of the kiss a minute later he looks happy. “So do you want your birthday present?”

Neville just grins, twisting his fingers in the ridiculous shirt Harry is wearing that reads _Gardeners Spend All Day In Their Beds_ , a birthday gift from Harry last year that Harry wears more often than Neville. He knows exactly what will be in the bag on the floor, another ridiculous gardening shirt that Neville will wear as often as possible so long as it means Harry smiles at him like he is now — as if everything he could ever want is directly in front of him.

It’s sort of funny, Neville thinks, as he pulls Harry in for another kiss, they’d both come to Hogwarts all those years ago to hide from life, and yet they’d both found a place where they don’t have to hide — a place where they belong, a place not to hide but to build a life, together. 


End file.
